This year has brought about a MAJOR breakthrough for us in terms of connectivity to the outside world. No longer is our only viable method for transferring our VS tracks to a computer a "realtime 2 track only" process. We now have the ability to stick a VS backup CD into a PC and quickly convert all the VS tracks directly into mp3s, 16 bit wavs or 24 bit wavs all at once.

This thread will give you detailed instructions for setting up your system and completing this task. Before I go any further, I must give props where they are due.

This has all been made possible through the dilligent and tireless efforts of vsplaneteers:

Randygo, Danielo and Bear.

There are two methods you can use. The first method was created by Randygo and requires using the Reaper software for conversion. The second method was created by Danielo and it bypasses the need for Reaper. A link to that method is at the end of this post.

2. Download a copy of Reaper which is a multi-track audio editor. You can download it and legally use it for FREE for 30 days. If you plan on using it after the 30 day evaluation period, you are required to purchase a user's license for $60. To me, it's 100% worth it! Download Reaper here.

4. Create a new folder on the "C:" drive and give it an easy name to remember like "test" or "rip." Unzip Bear's Ripper Tool and copy the file "Cd2Roland" to the new folder ("C:\test" or "C:\rip") that you just created.

5. Put a Roland VS Backup CD in your PC cd drive. Open a dos command prompt. In Windows, there is usually one under START > ALL PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES > COMMAND PROMPT. If you don't see one there, another way to get a dos command prompt is to go START > RUN > type CMD and press ENTER. For those of you familliar with dos, these steps will be easy.

When you open the dos command prompt, it will likely be open to Documents and Settings. We need to get it to display "C:\test>". The way to do that is by typing "cd.."

That's "cd" followed by 2 periods, then press Enter. Keep doing "cd.." until you get to C:\> That is called your "C" prompt. At the C prompt, type "cd test" or whatever name you used to create your new folder with and then press ENTER.

It should now say "C:\test>"

Now we need to execute or run the ripper program. That is done by typing the name of the program here followed by the drive letter of your PC CD drive. For example, if your PC CD drive is letter E, then here you would type:

cd2roland e

and then press ENTER.

You will now see a bunch of text start scrolling in your dos window. Your PC is now extracting the Roland VS files from the backup cd and placing them in the "test" folder. When it is done, you will get some kind of "finished" or "completed" message on the screen. GREAT!!!

6. Now that we have all the VS tracks safely stored in our test folder, we need to install and open Reaper. So go ahead and do that now.

7. After Reaper is installed, it's time to install the VS Plugin. That's very easy to do. Just extract all the files from the VS Plugin zip file and then copy the "reaper_vs.dll" file to:

C:\Program Files\Reaper\Plugins

Reaper SHOULD NOT be running while you do this.

8. The hard part is now DONE! Time for some fun! Open Reaper and choose "Open Project..." from the File menu and select your SONG file. It will be located in your "C:\test" folder. The SONG file will look something like "SONG.VR5."

The song will then be rendered into Reaper as a number of tracks each populated with the appropriate events. You should be able to play the encoded media directly in Reaper.

9. You are almost done! To convert your track(s) to .wavs, you have to select all the tracks you wish to convert with your mouse while holding down the CTRL key. Then select FILE > RENDER and select the following options:

The last two options, "Write BWF text chunk" and "Allow large files to use Wave64" can be checked or not. I usually leave them checked.

After you make your desired selections, press ENTER or RENDER. The tracks will now be rendered to wavs. When done, go to the output file to see your newly converted tracks.

Now wasn't that easy? It really is easy after you get everything initially setup. You'll see. These instructions may seem long, but that's because I tried to explain everything. Many of you already know most of this stuff. So once it's setup, it's a piece of cake.

Happy rendering!!!

You can also set up a .bat file that will automate the ripping process (STEP 5) for you. Here are my instructions for doing so:

2. Type cd2roland followed by your pc's cd drive letter: For example, if the drive letter is E, type:

cd2roland e

3. Click File > Save As... then type rip.bat and press ENTER. (You just created a .bat file. Now the following is what to do with it.)

4. Place your newly created .bat file in the "test" folder you made earlier.

5. Copy the cd2roland file into the "test" folder along with the bat file. Close the folder.

6. Right click on your desktop and select New > Shortcut. Click "Browse" and navigate your way to the "test" folder and select the "rip.bat" file and press ENTER. Rename the desktop shortcut whatever you like such as, "VS Tracks Ripper."

You're done! You have now created a .bat file and a shortcut to it on your desktop. Put a Roland backup cd in your cd drive and double click on the "VS Tracks Ripper" icon on your desktop and watch the magic begin.

***VERY IMPORTANT***Be sure to move all files from the test folder (except for the .bat and cd2roland) to a new folder BEFORE starting a new ripping process. Otherwise all your song files will get mixed together and will cause you major problems. ______________________________________________________________________________________

There is another method you can use that bypasses the Reaper program. It is called the "VSWaveExport Tool." It is a Windows application. To download the app and read instructions on how to use it, go to the following link:

Do I need Reaper to be able to work with these tracks after they've been ripped off the CD?

Yes, you have to use Reaper after the files are extracted from the cd. The reason is because right now, Reaper is the only multi-track audio editor that recognizes VS files. Sonar does not.

Quote:

I guess I'm not clear about what Reaper and the Reaper plug-in do.

Randygo would be much more qualified than me to answer specific questions regarding the Reaper Plug-in, however; to the best of my limited knowledge on this, I believe the Reaper plug-in allows Reaper to recognize the VS tracks and convert them to other formats, like .wav.

Quote:

Would those other applications - which allow you to save files in various formats, bit rates, and so on - be sufficient?

Nope, because they do not understand the VS language. Thanks to the RDAC decoding success of randygo and danielo, we now have a program that does: Reaper

And thanks to the wonderful insight of bear, we now have a quick and easy way to rip VS files straight from a backup cd that's inserted directly into a pc.

I wonder how many out there truly realize how big this is for the VS owner.

...never mind, I was trying to give you a totally automated batch file to automate the whole process, But I just realized it will not work on multiple cd backups....It would have made a new directory for each cd in the backup

but come on, using a batch file of some kind eliminates all the dos nastiness

just use notepad to make a batchfile (rip.bat or something) with one line in it

cd2roland (driveletter)

put this .bat and the cd2roland.exe in a directory somewhere...

and then all you have to do is click on it from windows....when it is done move the SONG directories to where you want them....

I was HOPING that someone would summarize it all! LOL! Thanks so much Vince (aka FunkyBeat)... and thank YOU, Randygo, Danielo and Bear! Truly VS historical! I'm looking foward to trying it all out when I come back from my extended hiatus from recording.

yeah, a simple .bat like that with a shortcut on the desktop ought to work good enough for now...

I had started to make a much more complicated one to automatically make subdirectories for each backup set based on the PC clock time, but realized that would not work with multiple CD backups.

Just remember to move the SONG directories to somewhere before ripping a second backup set, or the songs from the two backup sets may get jumbled.... there may be a SONG2 on two different backup sets for instance...

Run all the CDs for one complete backup set, then cut and paste all the SONG directories to another location, then do the second backup set etc.....

I saw this topic this morning at about 8:00 a.m. and I'm now running "the ripper" at 9:30 a.m. (1824CD). Many, many thanks to Randygo, Danielo, and Bear. Thanks also to FunkyBeat who has made the acquisition of this program "One Stop Shopping" complete with clear, simple instructions.

Hmmm Funky, I do not know what to say.... what is failing is the initial commands getting the hardware cd drive ready to do low level sector access....

Are you sure you are putting the CD into the E drive? (you are invoking the program to use the E drive) It is acting like the drive is returning a no disk detected.... Hmmm... No I just tried with no disc installed, and got a different error code....

It very well could be that some CD drive hardware just doesn't work correctly with these low level commands being sent to them... I am in kind of unknown territory here, bybassing windows and directly sending hardware control commands to the CD.

Cd drives are very cheap... you can probably add a new one to your machine for $20 or $30 dollars.

I will look into it a bit, but you may just be screwed on that particular drive.

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back with you all. I had 2 band practices today and a show. I had no time to even get near a computer today. I'm just now getting in.

Hook,Thanks for testing this out on Win2000 Pro. That tells me that the operating system is not the problem, but something else. I just pointed to the os first since that was the most obvious difference between my 2 computers.

bear,Yes, I also believe this is a problem with my drive. I am certain the correct drive letter for that particular drive is E. I tried both drives last night anyway.

I am gonna try the aspi drivers. That just might be the culprit here. I bought that computer used and I am not sure they updated those drivers on it.

I am certain now that this problem has nothing to do with your ripper. It is something with my cd drive or pc. I will do some troubleshooting on it now that I am home and report back to you guys later.

Thanks for all the help and advice guys. I hope to get this solved soon.

As i said funky, I am dealing with stuff I do not fully understand here... I see from the code that the cause of your error is that a call is being made to a very low level windows api function and getting a failure response....I have no idea what is going in inside that api call....

worst comes to worst just strip out the roland files on your xp machine and then move them to the 2k machine on cd for import to reaper.....

I updated the aspi drivers, but problem still persisted. The solution to the problem was found here:

Quote:

There is even a small chance that just installing these programs will put some kind of low level driver in place that will make cd2roland start working. SMALL CHANCE but worth trying....

THAT DID IT!!! I installed the alcohol software on my pc. Then before I made an .iso file, I just tested the Cd2Roland command and it worked perfectly. So bear was right, even though he thought it was a shot in the dark... he was RIGHT! The software must have installed some low level driver to my pc that it needed to run the Cd2Roland file.

So now I am wondering the following:

Do I need to keep the alcohol software on the pc forever? What about after the evaluation period, is the driver gonna stop working? What if I uninstalled alcohol? Will the program be removed but the driver remain in tact?

At this point, I am just gonna keep alcohol installed on the pc. LOL! We'll see what happens when the trial period is over.

1. Throw up your hands, say F%&^ing windows and leave well enough alone. I do not think the trial expiration of alcohol will uninstall anything on your machine, particularly if you don't even use it. It really dosn't hurt to have it there, it is not particularly a big program or anything

2. Un-install alcohol and see if the problem comes back, and try to figure out exactly what alcohol is doing to the registry or whatever...I'd advise against this one unless you have lot's time and are real curious....

Roland engineers in their infinite wisdom seem to use the extension .VS1 for VS2400 files.

Randygo's reaper dll does not understand .VS1 files, so for now I am saving as .VR1 (same as 2480) Other than this extension I see no difference between 2400 and 2480 files. It may have something to do with the number of VTracks in the EVENTLST though

Randygo really needs to fix his .dll to make this right......... for now it should work OK

Thanks for all your diligence and hard work. This is truly a fantastic thread, and I am excited about the implications here.

My situation is that I’m currently not hooked up to a computer, but I am absolutely determined to start getting out of the box by January. I have VS Pro, a soundcard, and a pretty powerful PC;/ so, now it’s just a matter of me getting off my ass and taking the next step.

Anyway, could we possibly keep this thread as a constant for a while? Maybe we could petition Hook and Paul to keep this thread at the top of the forum’s page. I think it’s warranted, as this is such a vital resource and breakthrough IMO.

One thing that hasnt been asked yet, at least i havent seen it, is: how does it sound? do any of these processes and/or resampling affect the final output of the .wav file? is any info (sound) dithered, truncated or lopped off? any noticible artifacts or harsh sounds? ...especially in the highs? would you say that the sound is equal to the original RDAC encoded sound?

excellent.i'm in.probably be after the holidays before i have time to jump in, download the required software, and actually but it to the test...

but i will.

as i migrate to sonar, i have several older projects i've wanted to re-work, and i continue to track with the vs and mix in the vs, outputting to Sonar as the final step..tracking in the vs, and MIXING in sonar, would be the next logical step.

great work ALL of you guys.keep this posting updated as more stuff is learned and tried...

_________________________
Bats Brew album links:"Stay", "The Time is Magic", "Trouble" & “The Wild Animals”...all found at Amazon.Bats Brew music Streaming

Originally posted by gonzo:...tracking in the vs, and MIXING in sonar, would be the next logical step.

That is just one perfect example of why this was created. A person can do all their tracking in their VS of choice... make a backup cd... stick that cd into a pc and quickly convert all their VS tracks into 24 or 16 bit wavs.

Import those wavs to your favorite audio editor for mixing, etc...

Quote:

i wish i had this benefit when i was using the VS. would have saved me HOURS and HOURS of transfering. glad it is working.

NYC,That's EXACTLY the point. That's why this breakthrough is SO BIG for the VS user. People who use computers for recording take this feature for granted. This ability now takes the VS user quickly "out-of-the-box."

Anyone who has ever had to make .wavs of their VS tracks using the 2 track out to SPDIF method will totally appreciate this. That way is VERY time consuming... especially if you have multiple songs. I've had to do it before and like you said, it took hours upon hours to do it correctly. Now we can do the whole process in a matter of a few minutes.

Things are going very well over here in FunkyBeatland. I have many projects going on... none of them my own material though. That's the one area I need to devote more time too, but thanks for asking.

2. Type Cd2Roland followed by your pc's cd drive letter: For example, if the drive letter is E, type:

Cd2Roland e

3. Click File > Save As... then type rip.bat and press ENTER. (You just created a .bat file. Now the following is what to do with it.)

4. Copy the Cd2Roland file into the "test" folder you made earlier.

5. Place your newly created .bat file in the same "test" folder with the Cd2Roland file. Close the folder.

6. Right click on your desktop and select New > Shortcut. Click "Browse" and navigate your way to the "test" folder and select the "rip.bat" file and press ENTER. Rename the desktop shortcut whatever you like such as, "VS Tracks Ripper."

You're done! You have now created a .bat file and a shortcut to it on your desktop. Put a Roland backup cd in your cd drive and double click on the "VS Tracks Ripper" icon on your desktop and watch the magic begin.